Homes tend to depreciate over time, some faster than others. Your best defense against this depreciation is maintenance. A well-maintained home can ensure that your home won’t depreciate as fast and it won’t depreciate as much. Here is some essential home maintenance you have to do every year.
Moisture Correction
Moisture can bring molds and many other fungi into your home. This can be quite problematic because these fungi can damage your home’s foundation. It can even create cracks on the walls. They can also pose a dangerous health hazard to your children or the elderly because they can trigger certain lung problems such as asthma and allergies. However, molds and other fungi aren’t necessarily the problem. The problem is that you have created a good living space for them to live on.
Every home can be vulnerable to molds and fungi if not maintained yearly. Moisture is one of your home’s greatest enemies, and you must keep it in check if you don’t want your home to depreciate as fast. You can check if your home is too humid if there is any condensation happening on your windows. There are various ways to decrease the moisture of your home. One way is to keep your HVAC systems on.
HVAC Systems
Your HVAC system is an essential tool when it comes to combating home moisture. It can help cool or warm your home so that it won’t be too humid. You need to have a temperature higher or equal to the temperature outside your home. By doing this, you don’t allow precipitation to happen. You can always turn down your HVAC system if you’re already experiencing the same temperature outside. Some dust or dirt might have gotten into the system if your HVAC system isn’t functioning properly. You must maintain it every year if you want good airflow into your home while reducing humidity.
Get a Dehumidifier
If you don’t have an HVAC system in your home, your best choice is a dehumidifier. Dehumidifiers help you control the temperature of your home without resorting to the use of an HVAC system. The simplest way to explain is that dehumidifiers make the air around a particular room dry and cool. Dry air combats humidity and lessens the overall moisture in the air.
Put Your House Plants Outside
Plants tend to increase the humidity of homes because they exhume dew in their leaves every morning. Additionally, every time you water the soil in their pots, that leaves enough water to humidify the surrounding air. Multiple house plants can increase your home’s humidity, and eventually, it’ll make many surfaces moist. If you want to avoid this from happening, you should start moving your plants outside.
The Foundation of Your Home
Aside from moisture correction, you’ll have to check the foundation of your home yearly. The very first thing you should check is your load-bearing walls.
Load-bearing Walls
Many homes rely on load-bearing walls to keep their structural integrity intact. It takes some time before these walls get damaged, but that’s why you must check on them regularly.
Check for load-bearing walls and see if they have any structural damage. A crack can be an unhealthy sign, and you should get that fixed immediately. If these walls tend to develop more cracks than usual, then you might have to install support beams into your home.
Support beams can help distribute the load. You can always ask a contractor to do this for you. They might do some remodeling and renovation. Part of this is welding. Remember that welds can leave an ugly stain on the support beams. Thankfully, there are cleaning solutions that can help you remove the stains. You can find welding cleaning solutions for sale online. This will ensure that your family and guests can see no stain once they have a good look into your support beams. The solution will also help increase the durability of the weld so you wouldn’t need to maintain it every year.
Once you have support beams installed, you no longer have to worry about your load-bearing walls. However, it’s still good to check on them from time to time.
House Sidings
Lastly, your house sidings are an essential part of your home that gets damaged quite frequently. Yearly maintenance of your sidings is important. Thankfully it’s not that hard to maintain them. To maintain your sidings, all you have to do is give them a good wash every year. A high-pressure hose can do the job, but make sure that you wipe the sidings dry right after you do it. This is to avoid moisture sticking into the siding, which can lead to cracks. This is very important for sidings that are made of wood.
These are some things you should always check every year to keep your house maintained. They are fairly simple to do, and some of the tips help you avoid them entirely. Keep your home maintained, and you shouldn’t worry about depreciation in the future.